With the automation of the synchronized national and local elections, many are now asking if the scheduled barangay elections in October will be automated as well.

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said Friday the barangay elections may not be automated since the purpose of automation is really to speed up the consolidation of the certificates of canvass (CoCs).

“The barangay elections don’t have consolidation. The point of automation is really to speed up the consolidation and not the counting,” he said.

“Although it would also be good if we’ll be able to use the precinct reporting system in the barangay elections,” added Jimenez.

But this, the poll official said will depend on the outcome of their post-election evaluation.

When asked what will happen to the more than 80,000 Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines that they leased from their automation partner Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) Corp, he said this will be temporarily kept in a warehouse in Cabuyao, Laguna.

“We’ll gather and put them on hold. When the time comes that there are no longer election protests then we’ll return them,” Jimenez said.

Last year, Smartmatic-TIM bagged the P11.3-billion poll automation project, outbidding nine other companies in a publicly-held bid proceeding.

Under the contract, Comelec will lease about 82,200 machines from the Smartmatic-TIM consortium, which would be done through the PCOS system.
 
The PCOS is a paper-based voting system, in which the marked ballot is fed into a scanning machine that records and electronically tallies the votes. After which, the results would be automatically transmitted.